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Scott Resnick, a former Madison alderperson, is proud of the work he’s done to advance the cause of open data. In 2012, the city enacted what he says was only the second open data ordinance in the country.

Open data is the practice of releasing huge quantities of public information in electronic form so it can be put to other public purposes. Governments, citizens, companies or others may then discover ways to use the data to create technological applications or to identify public issues that should be addressed.

While the concept sounds tech-heavy, the potential applications of open data span any number of real-world applications. For example, in Madison, Resnick says, a “bus radar” application designed by a university student allows would-be riders to track the location of a bus in real time, making it easier to avoid missing the bus.

The city of Madison’s open data initiative also led to development of an “adopt a fire hydrant” app that encourages citizens to locate and shovel out fire hydrants nearest them, Resnick says.

Nationally, the open data movement has increased access to geographic and weather data. Another “hot topic” in open data, Resnick says, is tracking police-related shootings and ensuring that data is standardized so that meaningful comparisons can be made.

Open data is popular among a new generation of virtual volunteers, including what Resnick refers to as “civic hacking groups.” Businesses are also prolific users. Resnick, who serves as chief operating officer of a private company, sees both as “a worthy use of government resources.”

Some companies use the data to improve public health, Resnick adds, noting that a private California-based company has developed an application that works with local fire departments to locate the nearest hospital for individuals in need of CPR. While the company is for-profit, Resnick notes, “their goal is to save lives.”

And while some companies may offer services derived from open data for a charge, Resnick says that when those companies compete with others who offer the services for free, “almost always, the free one has won out.”

Critics complain that open data only showcases data that government agencies choose to share, not more controversial records and information. But Resnick calls open data a “first step” that reinforces positive attitudes within government toward publicly releasing data. (He stresses that government should be careful to consider individuals’ privacy when releasing data.)

Other Wisconsin communities, including Milwaukee, are taking steps toward open data initiatives, and there is in interest on the state level, Resnick says. Many other states have legislation promoting open data.

With so much broad-based support for open data, those who seek to promote transparency in government need to be part of the conversation as it moves forward.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a nonprofit group dedicated to open government. April Barker, the Council’s co-vice president, is an attorney with Schott, Bublitz & Engel of Brookfield.

]]>jfoust@threedee.com (By April Barker)2015 ColumnsTue, 01 Dec 2015 06:00:00 +0000November: Bill would make it harder to follow the moneyhttp://wisfoic.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=360:november-bill-would-make-it-harder-to-follow-the-money&catid=60:2015&Itemid=105
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Follow the money. That’s one of the key lessons in politics, right?

Follow the money and you’ll find answers. Follow the money and you’ll see who’s influencing whom.

Follow the money and you’ll be able to connect special interest donors to the legislators whose votes can benefit them.

But it might be about to get tougher—a lot tougher—to follow the money in Wisconsin politics.

On Oct. 15, a state Assembly committee passed an amendment to acampaign finance bill to end the requirement that donors to candidates for state office list their primary employer, as is now required for those who give more than $100 in any given year. (Under the bill, donors of more than $200 per year would still have to list their occupation.)

The amendment, authored by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, was introduced and passed on the same day, without a public hearing.

The bill itself was introduced just the week before; it passed the Assembly on Oct. 21. It would double the amounts that donors can give to candidates, and adjust these for inflation every five years. It would let donors give unlimited amounts to political parties and legislative campaign committees, while letting candidates coordinate with special-interest groups that don’t expressly advocate for or against a candidate.

Good-government groups and their supporters have blasted those changes. But eliminating the employer-disclosure rule is also a blow against state laws that presume openness in government.

The nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign compiles a database of campaign donations, including donors’ employers. It’s an effective way to track trends in donations from employees of a particular business or industry to a candidate or party—that is, to follow the money.

Eliminating the requirement that donors say where they work will make it harder for “every good-government group and the media, as well as the public at large, to figure out who is really going to benefit from pieces of legislation,” said Matthew Rothschild, the WDC’s executive director. He notes that, while donors would still have to list their occupation, descriptions of “attorney” or “executive” are so broad they hardly provide true disclosure.

Vos and other supporters of the provision have said it’s needed to protect donors’ privacy and shield their businesses from boycotts if it’s discovered that employees have made contributions to a candidate. Rothschild rejects this reasoning: “If they’re going to be giving scads of money to politicians, they should face the music for doing that.”

The disclosure requirement also helped in the investigation and prosecution of Wisconsin & Southern Railroad Co. chief executive William Gardner, who in 2011pleaded guilty to two felony charges in connection with donations made by his employees. Prosecutors said Gardner used the employees to make contributions above the legal limits.

Without employer information, in the future those dots might remain unconnected.

Though the bill was on a fast track through the Assembly and has passed a Senate committee, there are signs that it may not pass the Senate without changes.

That means there’s time for members of the public to let legislators know they won’t stand for government moving further into the darkness.

To protect the public interest, we need enough light to follow the money.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by theWisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a nonprofit group dedicated to open government. Council member Larry Gallup is Gannett Wisconsin Media’s audience analyst and the former opinion editor at the Post-Crescent in Appleton.

On July 9, the members of the Wisconsin state Assembly collectively affirmed their support for open government.

They passed a resolution stating that the Assembly “remains committed to our state’s open record and open government laws and policies, and will take all necessary steps to ensure that these laws and policies are preserved without modification or degradation.” They vowed to “continue to work to uphold these principles and protections.”

The vote was 96 to one. The lone holdout, Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha, wasn’t taking a stand against open government but, in his mind, for it. He said he was “gravely disappointed” in his Republican colleagues’ attempt, the week before, to gut the open records law, but also in Democrats for “highjacking” the process with a hastily added agenda item. Fair enough.

Less comprehensible are the pro-resolution votes cast by some of Allen’s colleagues, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. It was Vos who asked for the changes that would have shut down public access to critical records produced by the Legislature and other units of government.

And, after the public backlash forced lawmakers to back down, Vos ordered the drafting of a bill to let the Legislature set its own rules regarding records access. (By the way, Vos’ role in these efforts came to light through the release of records that his original plan would have declared off-limits.)

The resolution was also backed by the five Assembly Republicans—Dale Kooyenga, Amy Loudenbeck, Dean Knudson, Michael Schraa and Mary Czaja—who as members of the Joint Finance Committee voted to add the provisions gutting the records law to the state budget after listening to their Democratic colleagues argue passionately against this.

Some Democratic lawmakers have proposed a constitutional amendment to protect the open records and meetings laws from further attacks. But how about actually making government in Wisconsin more transparent?

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council recently updated its “Legislative Wish List” of ideas for building on, as opposed to tearing down, the state’s tradition of open government.

For instance, Wisconsin could follow the lead of other states and require that when public bodies go into closed session, they make a recording, subject to judicial review if the decision to meet in secret is challenged.

The council also calls for an increase in the amount after which requesters can be charged for the cost of locating records. It was set at $50 in 1981, which if adjusted for inflation would top $125 today. Raising this threshold would likely lead to records being stored in more sensible ways, instead of charging requesters for inefficiencies.

Finally, why not bar any legislative proposal from being introduced without a clearly identified sponsor? That way, the next time some lawmaker tries to gut the open records law, it won’t be necessary to make a records request to learn who it is.

Declaring support for open government is nice, but it’s not enough. If state lawmakers want to prove they are not simply covering their butts and trying to score political points, they need to take steps in the direction of greater transparency.

Newspapers are usually reluctant to go to court. But sometimes we must, to protect our ability to report the facts readers need to assess the performance of their elected officials.

That was the case in February 2012, when Racine’s Police and Fire Commission was picking a new city police chief. The search had narrowed to three—two internal candidates who were minorities and one external candidate who was white—when the outside candidate removed his name from consideration.

Instead of continuing the selection process with the internal candidates, the PFC, in a closed session, decided to reopen its search.

That caused an uproar, particularly in the city’s minority community. And so my paper, the Racine Journal Times, asked the PFC who had made the motion to reopen the search, who seconded it, and how the five-member board voted.

Under state Open Meetings law, the board was required to record its votes, even those made in closed session. Under state Open Records law, it must divulge any record of those votes.

But the PFC denied our request for this record, twice, saying it had conducted a “balancing test” under the open records law and concluded that the potential harm from disclosure outweighed the good. Specifically, it said commission members feared for their safety if the vote was released, although it cited no threats or other indication of any imminent harm.

By that standard, any vote could be kept secret because an elected official feared the reaction.

The PFC offered a “compromise,” saying it would give us the record—but only after it had picked a new chief. We thought the community deserved to know the vote before the new chief was selected, so, reluctantly, we went to court to get that information. And that opened a labyrinth of legal complexities, as court cases sometimes do.

In the end, the PFC admitted it had not recorded its vote, though it was required to do so. Had the newspaper known there was no record of the vote, it could have urged prosecution of the PFC for violating the open meetings law.

A local court held that the PFC couldn’t be compelled to release a record that didn’t exist. The ruling was overturned on appeal but then accepted for review by the state Supreme Court. The paper’s position was backed by the state attorney general, who urged the high court to hold that a government body must reveal when a record does not exist.

But in June, the state Supreme Court rejected the paper’s position, with Justice Annette Ziegler writing that the commission responded with “reasonable diligence.” Justice Shirley Abrahamson, while agreeing that the paper was not entitled to recover its legal fees, argued that custodians should promptly notify requesters when a record does not exist.

Sadly, the court ruling will allow other custodians to get around the requirements of the law by failing to reveal when a record does not exist. (There is evidence that this is already happening.) And it will encourage other government bodies to delay the release of information or put the timing of that release beyond when the information is relevant to the community.

We lost in court. Unfortunately, the citizens of Wisconsin are now saddled with a court ruling that allows government to hide its actions.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by theWisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a nonprofit group dedicated to open government. Council member Steve Lovejoy, editor emeritus of The Journal Times, Racine, was a party to the lawsuit.

Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel noted the danger of tinkering with transparency at the summit he convened July 29 on open government. “Messing with open government laws is like touching the third rail,” Schimel said. “I think that lesson has been learned recently.”

The folks now running Madison got their hands burned while taking an ax to the trunk of our open records law, because the good people of Wisconsin—Republicans, Democrats and neither—rose up. The proposed changes were quickly pulled over the Independence Day weekend, and members of the public demanded to know who was responsible.

We’ve since learned more, thanks to our open records law. On the same day Schimel held his open government summit, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelreported on a new batch of emails.

They show that it was Gov. Scott Walker and staff who added language exempting “deliberative process” documents from disclosure. This would have let elected representatives—and bureaucrats—bury records revealing lobbying, opinions, analyses, recommendations and negotiations that precede a decision.

They also show that Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and staff sought language to grant lawmakers broad new privileges to hide legislative documents, even when sued, and to ban their staffs from discussing issues even after leaving their jobs. No other state provides such an expansive legal privilege.

These restrictions would have applied not only to the governor and Legislature, but also to town, village, city and county boards and state and local agencies — to anyone in government worried that something in the records could bring a bit of embarrassment, an objection, a call for improvement.

No one had a whiff of what Walker, Vos and other party leaders were planning to do to the open records law until they stuck it into the state budget, at the last minute, just before a holiday weekend. We now know they had been working in secret on the changes for weeks, if not months.

The released records show that a Legislative Reference Bureau lawyer was researching legislative privilege language last September. Vos had the drafts written on special legislative privilege sometime before June 15. By then, Walker’s language to hide all “deliberative” records had been added.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) and Joint Finance Committee Co-Chairs Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette) and Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) helped advance the changes. Ten additional Republican lawmakers voted them into the final draft of the budget bill that was meant to be quickly approved by the Senate and Assembly, then sent for the governor’s signature.

He is still refusing to release some records regarding his unpopular proposed changes to the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin, which heblamed on a drafting error. He is using the same language he tried and failed to insert into state law, saying he doesn’t have to release records made during deliberation of the proposed changes.

Two Republican lawyers agreed at Schimel’s summit that our open records law doesn't exempt those records from disclosure: Raymond Taffora, former chief counsel to Gov. Tommy Thompson and a top deputy to Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen; and Rick Esenberg, president of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

The move appears no more than an attempt to avoid “political embarrassment,” Esenberg said.

This is not a partisan issue. The people of Wisconsin want open, honest government.

It is not too much to ask.

George Stanley (gstanley@journalsentinel.com) is the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by theWisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a nonprofit group dedicated to open government.

On July 2, the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee unleashed a shocking assault on the state’s long and proud tradition of open government.

It happened at night, on the eve of a holiday weekend, just a few hours after the proposal was first unveiled. No one has taken credit for it. Committee co-chair Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, literally walked away from a reporter asking whose idea it was.

The committee’s cowardly action, which passed on a 12-4 party line vote with Republicans in the majority, was part of an omnibus motion stuck into the state budget. It will effectively end the Legislature’s need to comply with the state’s Open Records Law.

The changes exempt legislative communications from the law; shield from release all “deliberative materials” created for the purpose of making law or public policy (including opinions, analyses and briefings prepared at public expense); shut down public access to all records created in the process of drafting legislation; and specify that the Legislature can freely exempt any record from disclosure simply by passing a rule or policy.

These radical and sweeping changes represent a full-frontal attack on Wisconsin’s history of open government. They are clearly intended to block the public from discovering what factors drive the official actions of government, especially the Legislature, and will inevitably lead to abuse, malfeasance and corruption.

Should they become law, these changes would free the Legislature of the obligations of transparency in place for all other state and local governmental agencies. They will spare lawmakers from the burden of accountability to the people who elect them and pay their salaries. They will shield from public view the collusions of lawmakers with special interest groups, lobbyists and campaign donors.

In one 2014 case, bill drafting records exposed the involvement of a wealthy campaign donor in drafting a bill that would have reduced his own child-support obligation. The changes inserted into the budget bill would keep these records secret.

Bill drafting records have long been understood to be public records, and are now routinely posted online. The change inserted into the budget would make release of these records illegal.

In addition, the omnibus bill cuts away at public access to information about criminal charges in the state’s online court records system. It would allow charges filed against some individuals to “disappear” from this archive. While not as sweeping as some past failed efforts to remove records from this system, it is being done with virtually no public discussion.

The records these changes would seal off have, on countless past occasions, been used to expose wrongdoing and provide essential information on the workings of government. We should be pointing this out, as well as reminding people of the very strong proclamations in favor of transparency that have been made by our elected officials, including Gov. Scott Walker, who as a candidate said that the state Legislature needs to be more transparent.

And all of these changes are strictly policy matters, which have absolutely no business being part of a budget bill.

The people of Wisconsin need to rise in opposition to this attack on our state’s tradition of open and honest government. The future integrity of our state depends on it.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by theWisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a nonprofit group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders is the group’s president.

A provision snuck into the state budget bill by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee would deal a significant blow to open government in Wisconsin.

The provision, part of an omnibus motion of changes affecting the University of Wisconsin System, would exempt universities from the rule in place for all other state agencies regarding the naming of finalists for key positions. No longer would they need to identify the five most qualified applicants, or each applicant if there are fewer than five.

Moreover, only a handful of positions would be subject to even this limited disclosure: UW System president and vice presidents, and the chancellor and some vice chancellors at each campus. Currently, the finalist disclosure law applies to finalists for all state positions not in the classified service.

The change will keep the public—state legislators included—from knowing which applicants are passed up for dozens of important university jobs, including highly paid coaches and top administrators.

Media outlets across the state have condemned the change, which passed on a 12-4 party line vote with Republicans in the majority.

“Take it out,” advised the Wisconsin State Journal. “The public has a right to see a list of finalists for key public positions before an applicant is hired.”

“The Joint Finance Committee's action would further erode an open records law that is needed in a democratic government,” wrote the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

“This change in public records law doesn’t belong in the budget bill,” argued the Kenosha News. “At the very least, a policy change like this ought to be discussed on its own, not as part of must-pass legislation.”

And Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial writer Ernst-Ulrich Franzen speculated that lawmakers want “to escape any real discussion or even awareness of the measure. And that’s because they know that the argument for the measure is so weak it would not survive public scrutiny.”

Ironically, in April, the Joint Finance Committee yanked another secrecy provision affecting the UW from the budget submitted by Gov. Scott Walker. This one would have shielded records of university research, including controversial experiments involving dangerous pathogens.

Rep. Michael Schraa, R-Oshkosh, a member of the Joint Finance Committee, has offered this defense of the provision regarding finalists: “Highly successful and qualified individuals who currently hold a position somewhere else may be less inclined to apply if they know their name is going to be made public, even if they aren’t up for final consideration.”

But applicants for high-level jobs at public universities have long accepted disclosure as part of the process. There is no evidence the UW System has suffered a dearth of qualified candidates as a result.

Alex Hummel, spokesman for the UW System, says the change would “focus” finalist disclosure rules on top administrators, “not our larger-than-typical unclassified staff population, as is currently the case.”

But why is transparency for these other jobs a bad idea? Consider that, in January, the UW publicly named its two top candidates to head the University of Wisconsin Press. Before the final selection was made, both made public presentations outlining their vision for this important institution. Isn’t that an example of how things should work?

If lawmakers don’t pull this provision from the budget, Gov. Walker should use his veto pen to do it himself. The university system does not need, or deserve, an exemption from accountability.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a nonprofit group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders, associate editor of The Progressive magazine, is the group's president.

The office of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has crafted a new interpretation of the state’s open records law, claiming it can exempt records used in developing a final decision from disclosure. In this case, “new” is not “improved.”

Earlier this year, records requesters asked the office for its communications with the Department of Administration, after the governor’s proposed budget called for removing the “Wisconsin Idea” from the University of Wisconsin System’s mission statement.

The governor’s office, in response to these requests, refused to provide records containing “preliminary analysis and deliberations created and exchanged by and among employees of DOA and employees of the governor’s office,” before the budget was introduced.

Why? It said releasing these records would “discourage frank internal discussions” among budget-writing staff and “risk public confusion as a result of publishing non-final proposals,” which might not be adopted.

Wisconsin’s open records law creates a broad presumption of openness, and courts have held that exceptions must be “extremely narrow and well-defined.” The federal government and some states have recognized a “deliberative process” or “executive privilege” exemption to disclosure. But Wisconsin has not, and for good reason.

The public has the right to see what information the government used to reach a decision, and what alternatives were considered. Other bill-drafting records are routinelymade public after legislation is introduced. These records also reveal who took part in decision-making — a critical issue in the “Wisconsin Idea” budget snafu, after some documents showed DOA specifically requested that change.

When records are withheld, people inevitably wonder: What are they trying to hide? Public confidence in government is stronger when people can see the process as well as the result.

The Governor’s records denials also suggest the public cannot be trusted with decision-making information, or lacks the capability to distinguish between final and non-final decisions. Yet Wisconsin has gone decades without recognizing an executive privilege to disclosure. Pandemonium has not ensued.

If anything, the need for transparency has grown stronger as the budget is increasingly used to make policy. People want to know the basis for changes that affect key areas of their lives, like long-term care, schools and transportation. They also deserve that information on a meaningful timeline, while there’s still an opportunity to weigh in on changes before they are final.

Two of the denied records requesters have since filed lawsuits. TheCenter for Media and Democracy was the first. “(B)lowing a new hole in the public records law to keep (the Wisconsin Idea change a) secret would do grave damage to Wisconsin’s traditions of clean and open government,”said general counsel Brendan Fischer.

Katy and Jud Lounsbury andThe Progressive magazine challenged the denial of a February request. Their complaint says the withheld records “are quintessentially the kinds of records that the public records law requires to be made available to the public and the press in response to records requests.”

Opposition to an “executive privilege” exemption is shared across the ideological spectrum. Rick Esenberg, executive director and general counsel of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, recentlyblogged that the CMD denial was “wrong under our state law.” He said the idea that records can be withheld “because it might be awkward to expose the government's deliberative processes ... is one that our state Legislature, in enacting the law, has rejected.”

Let’s hope their view wins out. Otherwise, custodians will have a dangerous new tool to deny access to decision-making that affects us all.

In a recent column, state Attorney General Brad Schimel called for updating the state's open government laws to meet the challenges of the digital age. He’s exactly right. The laws were enacted long before the Internet — let alone Facebook and Twitter — came into being. They must be updated and strengthened to make sure that citizens in the digital age have the access to the government data they need.

As Schimel noted, “the laws do not provide guidance to identify the limits of open government. As such, what is a proper determination under the open government laws ends up being decided through litigation in our courts. The laws leave well-intentioned officials with no help in answering difficult open government questions.”

That doesn’t do much to help citizens.

Schimel’s point was underlined by an April 21 report from the Pew Research Center, titled “Americans’ Views on Open Government Data.” Among the report’s findings: “65 percent of Americans in the prior 12 months have used the Internet to find data or information pertaining to government.”

Most of that is for simple stuff: paying a fine or renewing a license or finding the hours of a local park or a government office. But it still illustrates how much citizens are using their computers, tablets and smartphones to obtain government information. That information needs to be easily accessible, up-to-date and in compliance with open government laws.

There’s also this from the report: “Few Americans think governments are very effective in sharing data they collect with the public.” Just 5 percent say the federal government does this very effectively, with another 39 percent saying the federal government does this somewhat effectively. State and local governments received similarly low numbers for how effectively they shared data.

“Americans have mixed hopes about government data initiatives,” the report found. “People see the potential in these initiatives as a force to improve government accountability. However, the jury is still out for many Americans as to whether government data initiatives will improve government performance.”

Much of that depends on how much people trust government, and how partisan they are. Those with a little more trust in their government — such as, generally speaking, Democrats — believe open government initiatives can work. Those who don’t — such as, generally speaking, Republicans — not so much.

For my part, I think open government initiatives do work to hold government officials accountable and provide better government. That’s not because I’m particularly more trusting of government; coming of age during the Vietnam and Watergate era made me a profound skeptic.

But I know that making sure records are as easily accessible as possible and that meetings are open gives citizens and journalists the tools they need to keep a proper watch on their representatives at City Hall, the state Capitol and in Washington.

All of which brings me back to Schimel, who promised last month to hold an open government summit “at which stakeholders, from media representatives, to citizen watchdog groups to government records custodians, will work to answer the vexing questions left unanswered by our current laws.”

He also said that the state Department of Justice “needs to lead by example, and we are overhauling our own public records practices.”

Schimel’s office says the summit is in the works, possibly for this fall. It can’t happen too soon. Given the findings of the Pew report, governments need to do a better job of providing information to their digital consumers, and they need to make sure the laws work for all citizens.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a nonprofit group dedicated to open government. Ernst-Ulrich Franzen is associate editorial page editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where this column first appeared.

Wisconsin’s new attorney general, Brad Schimel, contended in a recent column that the state’s open government laws “are outdated and do not adequately address today's technological environment.” He promised to initiate a process to provide “clearer guidance … without reducing rights to access.”

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, a state group devoted to protecting public access to meetings and records, supports this effort. The group’s “Legislative Wish-List” calls for establishing clear rules regarding the use of new technologies, so they do not make it harder for the public to track the actions of government.

Issues surrounding records access and technology have also enjoyed the national spotlight in recent weeks as former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended her use of a private email account for public business. Clinton cited “convenience” as her reason for this decision, which she admitted was a mistake.

One doesn’t have to be a Cabinet official to understand the quest for convenience in our era of busy scheduling and extreme multitasking. But because of Clinton’s unilateral decision, the public may be irretrievably denied any opportunity to independently review whether now-deleted electronic documents related to public business. For the public, therefore, Clinton’s approach made meaningful oversight of her communications very inconvenient, if not impossible.

Updating Wisconsin’s open records law, as Schimel proposes, could help clarify the obligations of public officials with respect to emails and other records that exist in electronic form. But it is critical that any updates be guided by the law’s stated and essential purpose: to provide the greatest possible oversight of the actions of government.

Public records advocates must be vocal and vigilant to ensure that revisions or guidance have the effect of amplifying access. Otherwise, there is a danger that the process proposed by Schimel could result in less access.

A few years back, the city of Madison tweaked its records law in light of new technologies. Its revised ordinance expressly requires that employees who use private email for public business must copy an official government account, thereby preserving a government record of the message.

The city’s ordinance asserts that the state’s records law provides “little or no guidance” to help resolve gray areas regarding new technology. But the statutory definition of a “record” is the most relevant guidance, and it broadly encompasses “any material on which written, drawn, printed, spoken, visual, or electromagnetic information or electronically generated or stored data is recorded or preserved, regardless of physical form or characteristics.”

There are issues that need to be resolved regarding the use of email and other technologies, like text messages, including what records must be retained and for how long. In all cases, the analysis should start from the premise that the public is entitled to maximum access.

Wisconsin’s records law states this explicitly, and instructs that providing the public with as much information as possible about the workings of government is “an essential function of a representative government and an integral part of the routine duties of officers and employees whose responsibility it is to provide such information.”

Requests for access should always be met with the assumption that whatever has been created must be shared. That’s true regardless of what technologies are used to convey information.

Public access is not an ideal that need be honored only when it is convenient, nor should any modifications to the records law be based on such considerations. The law itself makes clear that, in a democracy, access to information must prevail over convenience.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a nonprofit group dedicated to open government. April Barker, a council member, is an attorney with Schott, Bublitz & Engel of Brookfield.